On the same day as ‘Copeland’, we will have the ‘Stoke’ by-election – just the start of Labour’s catastrophic collapse under Corbyn?

A very recent post here [A new by-election looming at Copeland – a further humiliation heading for Corbyn’s “Zero Percent Labour”?] suggested that Labour are completely ‘out of touch’ with their voters so can’t be trusted by them, so may lose that seat which they have held for over 80 years.

Exactly that same judgement can be applied, and even more so, in the West Midlands Potteries’ urban constituency of Stoke-on-Trent Central, which is also up-for-grabs in a month’s time on 23 February, can’t it? Yep, it might have been a Labour seat for some 66 years, but the outgoing Labour MP Tristram Hunt certainly didn’t feel the pulse of his working-class voters (who voted by some 70% to leave the EU), so he played a major role in opposing BREXIT, but even he had resigned from the Shadow Cabinet because of substantial political differences with entrenched Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, didn’t he? However, in his departing gesture he rubbished the EU and also admitted that the Labour party’s crass official EU policy is the pits, as far as their traditional heartland people of Stoke are concerned.

Renowned historian & broadcast journalist, Hunt has jumped into a lifeboat from a scuttled ship, destined by Corbyn to be consigned itself to the depths of history, and no doubt to become a future major center-piece exhibition in Hunt’s new role of Director at the V&A Museum in London, don’t you think?

In the last General Election, nearly just two years ago, there was a poor turnout in Stoke (the lowest anywhere in the UK at only under half), but when it came to the BREXIT referendum the voters certainly did turn-up in their hoards to demand a return to sovereignty, the end of Britain’s support of the EU Project (which they blamed for the collapse of their local industries), and the effects of immigration on their low wage city (with large-scale migration pushing down wages even further, and decimating public services).

Now, does anyone really think that those same people of Stoke will now turn-out to attend the polling stations ‘en masse’ to provide support to a Labour Party that lies though its teeth when it says that it accepts the democratic decision of the Country to leave the EU, but at the same time says that it wants the UK to remain in the Single Market and Customs Union, which not only means that massive fees would continue to be paid to the EU, but sovereignty over our laws isn’t regained, local industries continue to suffer from its global pressure, and immigration will continue apace, eh?

The voters in Stoke will not be willing to have BREXIT watered down, so are highly likely to send that message to Parliament by abandoning Labour’s new candidate whoever that is, wouldn’t you say?

The associated bad news for Labour is that UKIP are seizing the opportunity that the ‘BREXIT capital’ constituency of Stoke gives them in securing their Party’s first genuine parliamentary seat [you see their current one member of parliament was originally a defector from the Tory party].

Their new leader Paul Nuttall is throwing his hat into the ring at Stoke, and he must have a good chance of getting very close to a success if not a win, wouldn’t you say? That said, he has however to overturn a majority of about 16½%, which is no mean task, but in the context of a BREXIT stronghold, you can’t calculate the result in a by-election like this, can you?

Stoke is basically a very working-class community and those are indeed the grassroots people who now feel unrepresented by Labour, which seems to be dominated by a London clan that focuses on all and sundry, including worldwide issues, rather than those that matter to their British voters, eh?

[Labour might angrily “huff and puff” and threaten to “blow the UKIP house in” at Stoke-on-Trent, but can it really, or is it one made of bricks so will still survive, do you think?]